"We are about to see the pharmacoeconomic model change...the integration of genomic information into drug design...will make the firms horizontally, instead of vertically integrated."

"Targeted pharmaceuticals and biologics...do work for the betterment of healthcare by reducing the cost and time of development and time to market. As we better understand the body as a biologic system (systems biology)...It is not just changing the healthcare paradigm, it is changing life itself."

Getting from time A to time B will not be simple. Trillions of dollars (and even more Yen and Euros) of investment capital in NBIC-related technologies will be needed if we are to see this level of change in the coming decade. More on the shifting economic geography of the pharma industry in time...

I think that, in addition to pharma's internal struggles with business models and the grand and impressive new technologies that are already revolutionizing research, we have to take a long hard look at the damage that the FDA is doing to the process. I'm sure you're familiar with:

http://www.fdareview.org

FDA employees, managers and political appointees hav no incentive to make decisions that benefit consumers, and every incentive to keep bloating the cost and time of development beyond all sense and reason.

Unless the FDA goes, there is no way we are going to see 10M/2year drug development timelines from inception to commericial availability.